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01.26 Local Democrats Invited to Brainstorming Session on Sun., Jan. 31
Ref. : Local Newsbriefs
02.04 'The Power of Nightmares': Underwear vs. Reason
Ref. : Letters to the editor
Video National Health Care Systems In Other Countries
02.03 Drugmaker Got Kickbacks for Nursing Home Patients
01.18 Drugmaker Got Kickbacks for Nursing Home Patients
02.04 Err-America
02.03 The Right Gets Itself 'Wired'
Ref. : The Daily Howler
01.25 Thinking About Fictions
01.24 US Democracy's End of the Road
01.22 Editorial: U.S. Supreme Court Nails Down the Coffin of Democracy
01.22 Security Fools
02.09 Palin, Psy-Ops & 'Condescending' Libs
02.09 Growing Hunger in America
02.08 The US Government has Lost its Reason for Being
02.08 Thinking About Oracles
02.06 No Direction Home: Pakistan and the Imperial Principle
02.04 Howard Zinn and the State of the Union
02.04 The US Supreme Court: Vanguard of Friendly American Fascism?
02.04 The New War Against Money
02.04 David Brooks Goes After Greedy Geezers
02.02 Obama's Budget Ducks Pentagon Cuts
02.02 Budgets, War and Blind Ambition: The Limited Minds of the American Elite
02.01 Thinking About Definitives
02.01 Remembering Howard Zinn (1922 - 2010)
01.29 American History 101: We Are Devo
01.29 Obama's Outreach to Americans: Empty Rhetoric, Business As Usual
01.28 The Supreme Court's Partisanship
01.27 Freeze Frame: Flopsweat and Farce in the Hollow Halls of Power
01.25 Granny D on Campaign Finance Reform
01.25 S.C. Republican’s Plan: Starve the Poor So They’ll Stop “Breeding”
01.23 It's Time for Kucinich, Conyers, Feingold and Other `Progressives' in Congress to Take a Stand
01.21 Massachusetts' Message of Stupid
01.21 Terrorism Defined: Bill Clinton Lights Our Way to Truth
01.21 How Obama Lost His Way
01.21 Political Earthquake Rocks Massachusetts
01.20 Obama Cuts Deal that Will Reduce Social Security, Medicare and all Entitlements
01.20 Critical Mass: Dem Agenda Opens Right-Wing Doors
01.19 Outsourcing War: The Rise of Private Military Contractors
01.25 The Silence and the Shield: Depraved Indifference to the Atrocities of Power
01.19 Dark as a Dungeon: A Brutal System Stripped Bare
02.07 AIG-Gate: The World's Greatest Insurance Heist
02.06 The Free Market Fetish
02.04 The Crisis is Not Over
02.03 States Face Worsening Recession with Health Care Funds on the Chopping Block
02.02 Rule by the Rich
01.29 The Battle of the Titans: JPMorgan vs. Goldman Sachs
01.27 State of the Union: Obama’s “Automatic IRA” Plan Could Make Bush’s Wildest Dreams Come True
01.26 Obama, Read Your Reagan on Capital Gains Taxation
01.24 Funding Public Health Care with a Publicly-Owned Bank: How Canada Did It
01.18 Thinking About Accelerants
02.08 Aafia Siddiqui: Victimized by American Injustic
02.07 Annals of Liberation: Obama Surge Driving Thousands From Their Homes
02.05 Human Rights Abuses in Israel and Occupied Palestine
02.03 Child Slavery in Haiti
01.30 Blood is His Argument: Tony Blair's Gentle Cuddling at Iraq "Inquiry"
01.28 Obama Ignores Key Afghan Warning
01.27 Haiti's Earthquake: Natural or Engineered
01.26 Helping Haiti’s Elders
01.26 Focus on Israel: Harvesting Haitian Organs
01.25 Focus on Haiti: Washington's Militarized Takeover
01.22 The Lessons of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions
01.18 Disaster Capitalism Headed to Haiti
COMMENTARY:
Iraq: Raped
An Illegal War Degenerates
Omar Al-Janabi, a neighbor and relative, was informed by Abir's mother that the young girl was being harassed by U.S. soldiers stationed in a nearby checkpoint. That is why Abir was sent to spend the night in her neighbor's home. The next day, Omar Al-Janabi was among the first people who found Abir, with her 34-year-old mother Fakhriyah, her 45-year-old father Qasim, and her 7-year-old sister Hadil, murdered in their home. Abir was raped, killed by a bullet in her head, and then burned on March 12, five months before her fifteenth birthday.
Unlike the case of Haditha, where Iraqi public opinion was furious about the massacre months before it reached to the U.S. mainstream media, the Iraqi press had not even heard of Abir until the U.S. army accidentally found out information about her while investigating another incident. This raises questions about the number of other similar cases that were never investigated and were blamed on non-occupation parties instead.
According to Iraq Body Count, a credible project documenting Iraq's civilian casualties, the occupation armies are directly responsible for killing more than one fourth of civilians in Iraq since the beginning of the war. This makes the assumption that Abir's case is just one of many even more plausible.
The "Hadji Girl" song is yet another indicator that what happened to Abir is most like not an anomalous case. "Hadji Girl" is a videotaped song about killing Iraqis written and performed by U.S. Marine Corporal Joshua Belile while he was at the Al-Asad Air Base in Iraq. The song became controversial a few weeks ago when the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) discovered it on the internet and objected to its lyrics.
The lyrics, accompanied by loud laughter and applause, include lines as such as "So I grabbed her little sister and pulled her in front of me. As the bullets began to fly, the blood sprayed from between her eyes, and then I laughed maniacally. Then I hid behind the TV, and I locked and loaded my M-16, and I blew those little fuckers to eternity. And I said Dirka Dirka Mohammed Jihad, Sherpa Sherpa Bak Allah, they should have known they were fucking with a Marine". A two-week investigation held by the U.S. army ended with no punishment for Corporal Belile. Furthermore, according to the spokesperson for the Mike Church Show, Mike Church is planning to record and release "Hadji Girl" and give royalties to Belile. The right-wing presenter will sing and release the song on air this week.
But even if you believe that the case of Abir is a rare exception, it is still a major scandal in Iraq. Issues relating to honor are even more sensitive for the Iraqi public and government than the ongoing daily civilian murders. The first Iraqi governmental reaction came when an Iraqi female member of Parliament asked for an urgent session for which Prime Minister Al-Maliki was called back home to attend. The Iraqi Parliament described the rape as a crime against "the honor of all Iraqis". As a result, Al-Maliki asked for a review of the laws put in place by U.S. Ambassador Paul Bremer, giving foreign troops immunity from prosecution in Iraq. This seems to be an Iraqi public demand. Iraqi tribal leaders had a number of meetings across the country last week on the anniversary of "Thawrat Al-Eshrin", the 1920 revolution against the British occupation. The largest meeting was that of the mostly Shia Middle Euphrates Tribes. During this meeting, they threatened to initiate a full-scale revolution against the occupation, similar to what had happened in 1920, unless the U.S. army hands over to them all soldiers accused of raping the "Al-Mahmudiyah Virgin," as she is now known.
Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi living in the United States, is the director of the Iraq Project at Global Exchange. Jarrar can be reached at: jarrar.raed@gmail.com.
Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent.
This story was published on July 12, 2006.
